India’s first public-private partnership incubator, Startup Village, is ready to take off from Kerala in the second week of April with a projected investment of Rs 100 crore and the aim of nurturing over 1,000 student start-ups.

The first technology business incubator in the telecom sector, Startup Village will come up in Kochi, looking to emulate the famed Silicon Valley incubators and transform Kerala into ‘Silicon Coast’. The project will kick-start the search for the billion-dollar company to rise out of an Indian campus.

The Startup Village campus will have full 4G network and advanced telecom labs. It will also provide services, including legal, intellectual property and accounting, in addition to fully furnished office space, video conference rooms and virtual office services. The hub will extend a host of perks, like three-year service tax exemption up to Rs 50 lakh revenues. The incubator companies can by default make a pitch presentation to Startup Village Angel Fund, promoted by the broadest community of entrepreneurs.

The ambitious project, which has several firsts to its credit, aims to transform job seekers into job creators. It is being set up by the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) under the DST, and the Kerala Government-run Technopark, in collaboration with MobME Wireless – a private firm which began as a student start-up and has grown to become one of India’s top 10 emerging companies.

``Six years back, in 2006, Technopark took its first steps into incubation when MobME Wireless, a young company promoted by then engineering students, was launched. That sparked a change in the mindset of youth in college campuses and Technopark incubator quickly rose in six years to become one of the most prominent National Incubators. Technopark won the President’s award for Best technology business incubator in the country for 2008. Today there are 125 companies in Technopark Incubator employing 3000 people and generating Rs 100 crore annual revenues” said Shri Ooomen Chandy, Chief Minister of Kerala while announcing the launch of the dream project at a Press Conference

Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder of Infosys, would be the Chief Mentor for startups and guiding them with his vision and expertise to make this a reality,’’ he said.

India’s telecom and information technology industry has also extended support to this bold venture which is expected to trigger a new wave of innovations.

Former NASSCOM chief  Kiran Karnik, UrbanTouch.com CEO  Abhishek Goyal; former Yahoo India R& D CEO Sharad Sharma; Dell India MD Shri. Ganesh Lakshminarayan, KK Natarajan of Mindtree,  Arun Kumar, Global Board Member of KPMG,  Dr. Ravi Pillai, the biggest employer of Indians in the Middle East and major local IT entrepreneurs like  Nandakumar of SunTec are among those joining the project as mentors and investors.

“Incubators are the catalysts of change and growth in any sector. The Startup Village is definitely India’s most ambitious project that will have a pan-India impact in the coming years. The combined experience of veteran industry players, along with the support facilities and funding opportunities, should help local start-ups emerge as global winners and the game-changers of tomorrow,’’ said former NASSCOM chief Kiran Karnik.